Black Angel of Death..., What do you think of Grand Nationals? Options

[bigjiggy81]

Thinking about selling my 1g awd project and my 90 300zx and getting an 86 Buick Grand National, the black angel of death as some call them, and also picking up a decent small pickup for daily driving, have any of you guys ran into any GN's or raced any? There are 2 i am looking at, both around 8k and both with about 125k miles, I really want one, to take out to the track every once in a while and also take to car shows and all that, some people love em some people hate em, i kinda like the "joe dirt" look of them, how about ou?

[turbohcar]

Umm, I'm not so sure about that.  Have you ever seen Wortdog's 'TurboBrick'?

Those things are factory freaks and take very well to mods.  I'll admit the buy-in is relatively high but but you'll put one in the 12's, 11's, and 10's more cheaply that the 400 powered Monte IMHO.

I've never seen Wortdog's Turbobuick but I'm sure it's fast. In fact, one of my good friends has one and it is my goal to beat him when my car finally sees some street time.

However, My friend Ryan just built a Street Stock race car. All the parts he put on it are street legal and the best guestimate is that he's making close to 600 whp. (we don't have a dyno but after 25 years of building engines his brother Chris should be able to guess pretty close). Chris is also quoted to have said that if they port the heads and put a roller cam in it for next year, he could be in the upper 700 whp range.

This car is a Smokey and the Bandit edition Trans Am with a Ford nine inch rear and an old two speed manual transmission out of god-knows-what. He built the entire engine for just over 5k. Heres the list:

Marx Carburetor (Holley stripped down and hogged out) by Anderson Performance
Holley Strip Dominator intake manifold
Dart Iron Eagle heads (not ported yet) 2.08 intake 1.60 exhaust
400ci block bored to a 406ci
Crower camshaft
Crower springs and retainers
SRP pistons
DynaTech Headers
Eagle Rods
rebuilt three puck clutch (the last time this clutch was used was in the Daytona 500)
ARP head studs and main studs
Clevite bearings all around
lightweight harmonic balancer and pulley assembly
lightweight driveshaft

This is all that I know of that's on the car. He has money in pushrods, rocker arms and some other things but those are the only performance things I can think of. We ended taking the car to the track two weeks ago (Farmer City) and actually blew the rear end out after a poor start (Ryan had never driven the car on the track before the heat race). But, he got comments from a few fellow racers that they've "never seen a street stock move so fast down the straightaway". Not saying that a turbo Buick wouldn't be faster depending on the application but, you're still going to have a stock Buick versus a healthy modded (rebuilt) Monte Carlo.